Righteous Denial

"Under the pre-1967 borders, Israel already controls 78 percent of historic Palestine. So, its forcible appropriation of large swaths of the remaining 22 percent is rightly denounced by international jurists, human rights organizations and UN members for what it is: a massive illegal land grab that makes Palestinians' daily lives miserable and prevents the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, as proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan."
Thomas Woodley, president, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

"The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], forerunner of today's Palestinian Authority [PA] was founded in 1964, three years before Israel came into the unintended control of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] and Gaza."
"What therefore, between 1964 and 1967, was the PLO planning to "liberate"? The answer, of course, was -- and still is -- all of Israel. These are precisely the "1967 borders" that President Obama has insistently identified as the appropriate starting point for peace negotiations, and that are generally recognized by military experts -- American as well as Israeli -- as the invitingly indefensible "Auschwitz borders"."
Louis Rene Beres, professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

"CJPME [Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East] does frequently criticize the Israeli government. This is consistent with our mandate: to promote respect for international law and human rights in the Middle East. Israel is indeed a major perpetrator of human rights abuses for a number of reasons. Canadian MPs hear a lot from apologists for or deniers of Israel's violations. CJPME cannot be faulted for wanting to ensure that the MPs hear an alternative perspective."
Thomas Woodley, president, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

"Since then, [evacuation of Israeli Jews from Gaza] Israel has had to undertake several major self-defense operations against Gaza-based Palestinian terrorism, most recently, the Gaza War of this summer, Operation Protective Edge.
Why does no one expect the Palestinians to cease all deliberate and random violence against Israeli civilians before being considered for admission to full statehood in the civilized community of nations? It is sadly and abundantly clear that the Palestinians are actually seeking something very different from an "end to occupation." Both Fatah and Hamas, in their charters, daily declarations, non-stop incitement to murder, and official maps -- long familiar in Washington -- include all of Israel as a part of "Palestine." For both Fatah and Hamas, there has always been the disingenuous quest for a "One-State Solution," a not-so-secret code for demographically flooding Israel to make it an Arab state in which the Jews, who have lived on that and for roughly 3000 years, might continue there on sufferance as "tolerated" subjects or be completely expelled, depending on the speech. [1]

It probably has never even occurred to the U.S. Administration, Sweden or Britain that both Hamas and Fatah still identify their common ideological mentors as Hitler and Goebbels, two figures who remain ardent objects of admiration for the prospective rulers of a nascent "Palestine".[2]
Louis Rene Beres, professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

An Israeli policeman stands on guard near the scene after a car rammed a group of pedestrians at the Ammunition Hill tram stop, which lies on the seamline between west and occupied east Jerusalem. Photograph: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

Mr. Woodley, attempting to explain his perspective and the exemplary manner in which he claims his organization represents the Israeli-Palestinian situation within Canada ostensibly to 'inform' Canadians at large and Canadian Members of Parliament in particular of the truths underlying the implacable Israeli refusal of peace and justice toward the Palestinians, somehow manages to miss the fact that the Palestinians deliberately, covertly, cleverly, time and again find some reason, without the cogency of reason, to deep-six all peace negotiations with Israel.

The man has taken public umbrage with a newspaper piece written by Terry Glavin, a commentator whose perspective is quite obviously nowhere near approximating Mr. Woodley's. Mr. Glavin forthrightly describes Mr. Woodley as anti-Israel, which Mr. Woodley sanctimoniously denies, despite all indications to the contrary. "With a civilian death toll of six in Israel, and 1,486 in Gaza, Israel's claim to victim status was revealed as bogus", he wrote. Nowhere in that brief, self-serving narrative is an acknowledgement that most of the so-called Gaza civilian deaths can be accounted for Hamas fighters meeting their deserved end.

Nor that Israel has suffered intolerably frequent assaults by Hamas, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah and other death-delivering Palestinians eager to bring insecurity and to demolish the Jewish state which finally led it to asserting its right to be present in the Middle East as a Jewish state dedicated to the protective haven-offering for worldwide Jewry. And that the Gaza War ensued as a result of constant violent provocations by Palestinians against Israel. Nor does he give any inkling that Britain historically gave most of the original Palestine in a generous gesture to the Jordanians, and this is precisely where the Palestinian State should be located.

Over the years, mainly during the second intifada, Palestinian organizations killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and wounded thousands in attacks that deliberately targeted civilians in Israel and in the occupied territories. B’Tselem strongly objects to attempts to justify these attacks through distorted interpretations of international law. Civilians must be shielded from all hostilities. Attacks against civilians undermine every moral, legal and human standard. The intentional targeting of civilians, under any circumstances whatsoever, is defined as a war crime.

In the words of Professor Beres, offering an unadorned, unaltered perspective on the rights and justice in this matter: "One Israeli prime minister after another has attempted to trade land for peace and each has received, in response, only endless terror attacks, rockets, and protracted war. The reasons for the unrelenting lack of Palestinian reciprocity, generally unhidden and doctrinal[3] can easily be found in our daily newspapers. Both the PA and Hamas leaderships, for example, demand that Israel continue to have 1.8 million Arabs as full citizens of the Jewish State, but simultaneously insist that not a single Jew be allowed to remain as a citizen of the impending Palestinian state. This expectation, that Palestine will be "judenrein," or free of Jews, is a total contradiction of the original U.S. support for the Palestine Mandate, and of all authoritative international law."

That represents historical reality, not the mealy-mouthed offerings of CJPME of which its president writes: "CJPME strives simply to prepare Canadian policy-makers and society to play a constructive role in this process, so that Israelis, Palestinians and others in the Middle East might enjoy the human rights, peace and security that they so deserve". While in reality it is only within Israel that all its citizens, Jews and Arabs, Christians and Druze and any other minorities who are fortunate enough to have Israeli citizenship enjoy human rights and peace. It is only security, thanks to the constant assaults by their neighbours, that Israelis lack.

Another undeniable reality that Mr. Woodley prefers to overlook is that all the pleasures and rights and freedoms available to Israelis within a free and democratic society are missing in neighbouring Arab/Muslim states. Many of whose severe dysfunction through oppressive tyrannies antagonize their own citizens who cannot rely on absent democracy to assert their rights. Not to mention those wonderfully administered countries like Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon where human rights dare not raise their tentatively hopeful notional heads. And where bloody conflict rages threatening to consume the entire geography